I'll be sure to check out The Laramie Project on HBO. Saw the first 20 minutes of The Matthew Shepard Story and couldn't get pulled into it enough to watch the rest. As far as violent images PG-style goes, the opening images are rather effective. (It reminded me of the technique Lynch used in the last episode of Twin Peaks when he offed Laura Palmer in a flashback--lots of cuts, slowmo, grain, cacophony, suggestiveness of violence; it's also a like the shower scene from Psycho filmed on quaaludes.) I didn't buy Stockard Channing as his mother, maybe it looks like she was still suffused with her corporate bitch/maternal spinster CEO character, Julie Styron, from The Business of Strangers. The biggest surprise was to learn that it was directed by Roger Spottiswood. So this is what he's doing these days.

The conversation on Donnie Dorko is interesting; I'm half-reading it, worried that even non-spoilers might reveal too much. If it's out on DVD, I'll check it out, although Joker's likening it to the work of Araki (albeit, a better Araki) doesn't bode well.

Has anyone seen Lantana? It's slow, thoughtful, deliberate, scattershot...and tries to come together at the end. The director Ray Lawrence succeeds in achieving something elusive--the film has an episodic disjointedness, but it coalesces in the viewer's head afterwards. I think it was his intention all along. See it if you've never appreciated what a good actor Anthony LaPaglia is (he does the weak everyman routine very well), or if you've forgotten how bad an actress Barbara Hershey is (she does the stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb shtick very well).